Haunted: Penance / After the Lightning / Seeing Red. Debra Cowan

I agreed that he’d been an ass,” he said with another rough laugh.

      The muscles in Ariel’s face twitched as she smiled for the first time in two weeks. “You’re a good friend.”

      Ty’s breath audibly caught. “Yeah, and that’s too damned bad….”

      Before she could ask what he meant, his door rattled, shaking under the pounding of a fist. “Ty, you all right? I heard about the suspension…” David’s last word trailed off as his friend opened the door. “Ariel!”

      His dark eyes were shadowed, lines of fatigue rimming them. He’d apparently suffered as many sleepless nights as she had. He turned his gaze on Ty, his tone accusatory as he said, “You found her.”

      “Nobody found me,” Ariel maintained. She was still lost, in so many ways.

      David’s gaze, full of heat and passion, swung back to her. The air between them crackled. “Ariel…”

      “I was heading to the Towers,” she insisted, resisting the urge to throw herself in his arms. She had run away when she’d needed him most and spent the past two weeks convincing herself she had to get used to being without him, that if he knew the truth he’d reject her. Assuming the worst hadn’t been fair to either of them. “But I wanted to check on Ty first.”

      “You’ve checked. I’m fine,” he said, his raspy voice dismissive. “You two can leave me alone.”

      Is that what he really wanted? She’d told David the same thing, but she hadn’t been alone. She’d had Haylee, who’d stayed close to her, perhaps feeling Ariel’s pain and knowing her teacher needed her. Mist funneled into the room; light warmed it, and Haylee appeared, hovering at Ty’s side. Did she think he needed her now, even more than Ariel did?

      Ariel had David, if he still wanted her. From the way he stared at her, his eyes full of hunger and yearning, she suspected he did. But then, he didn’t know yet what she had to tell him.

      Ty cleared his throat, drawing David’s attention to him. “Are you fine?” David asked him. “You’ve been suspended.”

      “Why?” Ariel gasped the question.

      Ty’s mouth twisted into a bitter grimace as he explained, “Man dies at the hands of an off-duty police officer. Internal Affairs has to investigate.”

      “You’ll be cleared,” David insisted, “and reinstated to active duty soon.”

      Ty shrugged as if he didn’t care. Ariel didn’t know him well, but she knew enough about Ty to realize that his job was his life. Losing it would kill him.

      She could identify. Her heart ached for her second graders. Not only had they lost a classmate—someone they’d all loved—but their teacher had been taken away from them, too. Tears threatened; she missed them so much.

      At least she could still see Haylee, faintly, as her image began to fade into the mist. Both men, intuitive, insightful men, were blind to what she saw, the light and the child.

      “I’m sorry,” she said to Ty again.

      “Same thing happened to you.” Ty revealed his knowledge of her.

      “I talked to the principal,” David admitted. “I’ll talk to the board next.”

      “Don’t,” Ariel said, knowing that he wanted to fix things for her. But there were things that even his money and influence couldn’t fix.

      “You’re not ready to go back to work,” he surmised as his dark eyes asked another question. Was she ready to go back to him?

      “Would you two like me to take off?” Ty asked, either with generosity or bitter irony. His raspy voice distorted his tone and his blue eyes guarded his emotions.

      “No,” Ariel was quick to reply.

      “We’ll leave?” David worded his response as a question, asked of Ariel, not Ty.

      She stepped closer to him and nodded. “I’ll meet you at your penthouse.” Then she added in a whisper, “Give me a minute alone with Ty?”

      Some dark emotion passed through his eyes, making her shiver as if a cold wind had blown into the apartment. But he nodded, then glanced at Ty over her head. “We’ll talk later.” His deep voice vibrated with a warning. About Ty’s suspension or about her?

      The door shut hard, just short of a slam, behind him as David left them alone. Ty blew out a heavy breath. “Sometimes he forgets that I’m not one of his employees.”

      David didn’t treat Ty like an employee, though. He treated him more like a brother. Underneath the bossiness there was affection. After she’d been separated from her family, Ariel had known little affection in her life.

      “Why are you friends?” she wondered aloud, then felt heat rush to her face. “I don’t mean that in a derogatory way. It’s just that you have nothing in common.”

      Except their intensity.

      Half of Ty’s bruised mouth lifted into a crooked grin. “Oh, you’d be surprised.”

      “Seriously.” She wanted to know. In the six months she’d been with David, their friendship had fascinated her. She’d never experienced anything like the bond between them. Not even her family had been that close, not as close as she’d like to remember. If they had, someone would have found her by now. Despite the times she’d run away, she’d always come back to Barrett. She hadn’t changed her name; she’d waited for them to come find her. But no one had looked. No one had cared.

      “Seriously?” Ty repeated, lifting an eyebrow creased with a thin scar. He sighed before sharing his succinct answer, “History.”

      “History?” She smiled at his odd response. “You mean because you were friends for such a long time?”

      Ty sighed. “It’s more complicated than that. David’s never told you?”

      Her lips turned back down; she didn’t feel like smiling anymore. “Told me what?”

      Ty’s blue gaze was ever watchful, his tone curious as he asked, “How much do you know about him?”

      Not nearly enough, apparently, but she’d always thought she knew more than he did about her. “Of course you’re going to know more than I do about David. It’s not like we’ve been dating for years,” she defended her ignorance.

      And it wasn’t as if they spent all their time talking when they were together. So much of their communication required no words. Only kisses, caresses…moans of pleasure. If there was something about him she needed to know, she was certain David would have told her. She was the one keeping secrets.

      “No, it’s not,” Ty agreed, rubbing a hand along his jaw darkened with stubble as well as the shadow of the bruises from Haylee’s father’s fists.

      Ty had said that Haylee’s father had died resisting arrest. Based on media accounts, during the ensuing fight, Mr. Reynolds had sustained a blow to the head that had killed him. She knew what had happened, but there was something else she had to know.

      “Why did you go that day?” she asked.

      He shrugged his broad shoulders as if it were no big deal. “You asked me to.”

      “But I didn’t give you a reason.” Because she couldn’t. She couldn’t tell him how she’d known that something horrible had happened to Haylee. She’d have to tell David first. “Did you trust my…instincts?”

      His blue eyes unblinking, he stared intently at her. “I trusted you.”

      She drew in a quick little breath. “I need to go.”

      He nodded. “To David.” This time she caught the bitterness in his voice and eyes as he held open the door for her to leave. What was the history between these two supposedly